WWDC 2006
When I started working for Apple, I was pretty sure that I'd attended my last WorldWide Developer Conference, but I got a happy surprise last week when my manager asked me if I'd like to attend this year. "Sure!", I said, and off I went.
Attending an Apple keynote is always an exciting event for someone like me whose life has been so massively influenced by Apple and their products. Attending as an Apple employee is slightly less so, because Apple folk are in some ways second class citizens at WWDC. That's sensible, of course. Paying customers should get first crack at the best seats in the house and the food at lunch time. It was just a slight adjustment for me after attending so many times as an external developer. We Apple folk watched the Keynote from an overflow room.
From my perspective, the keynote didn't hold much that got me personally excited. That is, except for the 'todos' framework, which I heard several people snickering about and slamming as a nonfeature not worthy of a major OS release. Well, I disagree. I've got to-dos all over my email, to-dos in my address book, to-dos on sticky notes in both the dashboard and that sticky application, to-dos in my Mori documents, as well as entire omnioutliner documents dedicated to lists of todos. Plus another set of all that on my machine at work. Hell, yes, I'd like a unified scheme for managing them, and a little OS support and .mac syncing will be a very nice thing. Little things matter.
Not being able to talk about what I'm working on didn't present much of a problem, because virtually nobody asked. It was great to reconnect with folks from my past, and really nice to meet some folks who I've been working with remotely, and some 'celebrity' developers whose names I've heard of.
It's a tough week though -- a full time job, plus a lot of walking and sitting on not-so-comfortable chairs. I made a decent effort to get some 'real' work done, but it was pretty challenging with everything that was going on. The sessions themselves varied in usefulness. I find most of them aimed either too low or too high for my liking. The "What's New" and "State of the Union" type sessions are the most interesting to me because I already have a lot of the background, but many of the other sessions I got to spent too much time on the basics to be very attention-grabbing.
Still, if you're a Mac developer, there's no place like it. You can meet a lot of cool people and learn some interesting stuff. And if you're lucky you'll also be able to sample a Moscone Special....
Attending an Apple keynote is always an exciting event for someone like me whose life has been so massively influenced by Apple and their products. Attending as an Apple employee is slightly less so, because Apple folk are in some ways second class citizens at WWDC. That's sensible, of course. Paying customers should get first crack at the best seats in the house and the food at lunch time. It was just a slight adjustment for me after attending so many times as an external developer. We Apple folk watched the Keynote from an overflow room.
From my perspective, the keynote didn't hold much that got me personally excited. That is, except for the 'todos' framework, which I heard several people snickering about and slamming as a nonfeature not worthy of a major OS release. Well, I disagree. I've got to-dos all over my email, to-dos in my address book, to-dos on sticky notes in both the dashboard and that sticky application, to-dos in my Mori documents, as well as entire omnioutliner documents dedicated to lists of todos. Plus another set of all that on my machine at work. Hell, yes, I'd like a unified scheme for managing them, and a little OS support and .mac syncing will be a very nice thing. Little things matter.
Not being able to talk about what I'm working on didn't present much of a problem, because virtually nobody asked. It was great to reconnect with folks from my past, and really nice to meet some folks who I've been working with remotely, and some 'celebrity' developers whose names I've heard of.
It's a tough week though -- a full time job, plus a lot of walking and sitting on not-so-comfortable chairs. I made a decent effort to get some 'real' work done, but it was pretty challenging with everything that was going on. The sessions themselves varied in usefulness. I find most of them aimed either too low or too high for my liking. The "What's New" and "State of the Union" type sessions are the most interesting to me because I already have a lot of the background, but many of the other sessions I got to spent too much time on the basics to be very attention-grabbing.
Still, if you're a Mac developer, there's no place like it. You can meet a lot of cool people and learn some interesting stuff. And if you're lucky you'll also be able to sample a Moscone Special....
posted by Brent at 4:57 PM
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